The Midgar Chronicles
by CBK1000
Summary: The city is magnificent: an entire galaxy of stars among black eternity. This is the story of her people.
1. Farewell Winter

**A/N: So this site totally messed up some of the formatting on the title. Argh! Anyway, a couple of notes on this story: the formatting of it is inspired by The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite authors, and is an ongoing series that is essentially a collection of one-shots that can each stand on their own, but will, put together, form a larger storyline. This will take place throughout the entire compilation, excluding Before Crisis. I believe the timeline is as close as I can get it, considering the fact that online sources like to contradict each other quite a bit. I'm done tearing my hair out over it; these first couple of stories, which take place before the compilation, may be slightly off in terms of years, but those taking place during the compilation should line up with canon. Hopefully. If anything is majorly off, please feel free to bitch slap me.**

**A couple of characters' ages have been adjusted slightly, and I'll make note of that when it comes up. I plan on taking a few liberties with canon, but for the most part, the storyline should follow the compilation pretty closely, so if there are any huge deviations, please let me know; I'm still very new to this fandom.**

**And last, but certainly not least, huge thanks to Bobbie, for her insightful comments throughout this, and for taking the time to not only sit down and read it, but to several times leave me rolling with her overwhelming Reno love. I've enjoyed our conversations. **

September **1983: **Farewell Winter

Autumnal storm-fire splits open the clouds and makes dark shadows of children beneath tables, and around wall screens full of snow gather black shapes of the adults to whom these children belong, pressing in and in and in. Angled slopes of shoulders and doorknob hipbones beneath rags jut out and slant in and thrust forward, and around wall screens full of snow fold black shapes of adults into tidal waves that break and break and break upon one another.

"…breakthrough technology…"

Tiny drumming heartbeats of raindrops pull white-moon faces from beneath tables and smear snow into galactic black nothing.

Through September soil slog the few who will not be cowed by this autumnal storm-fire that breaks apart pink pixel-spots of faces, splashing and screaming and daring one another to brave the fringe of woods beyond village boundaries.

For just a moment, the snow returns and pulls apart like taffy-

"-after long months of grueling research, Shinra Manufacturing Works has uncovered the secret to converting Gaia's Lifestream into a substance known as 'Mako' that can be used as an alternative electrical energy source-"

And the black tidal wave surges and crests with a sound like the roar of September skies overhead-

"-President Shinra anticipates that, with the Lifestream itself at our disposal, power shortages all across Gaia will be eliminated within just a few months time-"

There are clumsy back pats and wiped cheeks and soft spreadings of tentatively believing smiles all around, and from beneath their splintered havens crawl tiny scuttling shadows of children.

Outside, autumnal storm-fire shatters the sky and makes luminous coins of the eyes of these tiny scuttling shadows of children, and flakes of snow upon gray-fog background peel apart into black-rot nothing-

And it does not matter.

One day it will come back, one day it will no longer be winter wasteland getting pulled apart and sloppily stitched back together, but images like spring, bright and drenched and full of _color_, imagine _that_, and above them will no longer flicker bare dusty bulbs dying indignant premature deaths, but rows upon rows of lights like stars, whole _chandeliers_ of them-

Shinra Manufacturing Works- that President Shinra- what a company, what a _man_- long live them _both_; farewell winters with no heat and televisions full of snow and tiny bobbing constellations of candles in the dark-

Hello endless summer oven-heat and outlets that do not spark and spit out white-hot freckles of electrical short out-

September skies unwrap themselves from the sun and out peek little reminder slivers of summer, painting yellow the puddles through which splash dark shadows of frightened children beneath tables, no longer afraid.


	2. There But For the Grace of Gaia Go I

**A/N: This story is very dark, and is not for anyone with a weak stomach, who cannot handle some very heavy issues. Also, there is homosexuality in this piece. A lot of it is implication, but there is a male on male scene; I warn for this only because, if it is absolutely not your cup of tea, I want you aware of it before reading. The male on male scene is not x-rated in its graphicness, but it is certainly apparent what's going on, so proceed at your own risk. This is also my first attempt at yaoi, so take that as a warning as well: newbie yaoi author on the loose.**

July **1993**: There But For the Grace of Gaia Go I

None of them start out wanting to be prostitutes. Sure, he can't speak for all of 'em, ya' know, but once upon a time these pockmarked faces all carved into sinew and caverns (hollows under the eyes and imprinted into the sides of the cheeks, so deep it's like you could fall into them, he thinks sometimes, but who's he to criticize, yo? He don't look so hot himself, sometimes) used to be children with a home somewhere, and he knows this because that's what he used to be, before Death took away his mother and scrubbed the innocence from his heart.

Left it all fuckin' porous, too, because some days all his feelings just leak right through these left-behind spots and spill out from inside his chest, and thing is all it takes is a little sun-wink of gil and a tip of the chin toward whichever alleyway happens to be closest, and sure thing, mister, Reno'll bend over nice and pretty for you, let's just have that money first.

And the rest of these kids (cuz kids is all they are, all of 'em, even him, even if some days the insignificant span of his life weighs like 105 years instead of fifteen) are the same, yo: flash a little cash and up comes the skirt or out comes the prick and twenty'll get ya' most anything, because that's enough to buy bread for a week.

The trick is this, he's found: make the flabby old sacks feel all special, let 'em think takin' a couple a' pumps in the ass from their droopy old dick spills you right over the edge, let each of 'em think they're the best you ever had, _ever_, and suddenly twenty becomes thirty, and then forty, and then a gift here and there, somethin' cheap at first so the wife won't notice, and then before you or they know it they're blowing gil like it's Mako, and maybe your asshole's all ripped to shit some nights, but hey lookee here, got an apartment and a cupboard that's not empty, and all you had to do was brace yourself against a wall or a street or a window pane somewhere and moan a little.

And that's how you know you're makin' it, in the slums.

Raw-rubbed cock and fumbling lips and crescent moons of love marks all over areas you don't even want to know about, that's what keeping yourself alive is all about down here, but that all ain't so bad after a while, he tells all the newcomers to this sordid little street corner with the rows upon rows of children like columns of dolls, empty glass eyes and all.

You'll get to eat.

He tongues his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and walks with both hands in his pockets, down and down and down the line, and a wink of streetlight off brown-dirt hair straggling to a white-dough chin brings him to a halt, a frown on his lips. "Yo, get lost, Jessy. You're too young to be here yet."

Her eyes go on forever, black lace and blue liquid, and what bothers him the most about this sad sagging little girl solemnly picking out her own spot on this sordid little street corner, is how much more it should bother him.

Her shoulders are so fuckin' thin he thinks they will snap beneath the weight of her shrug. "Mom's shop got shut down. We haven't eaten for almost a week."

He flicks his cigarette back and forth and back and forth, and he's got nothin'; how it goes down here, is all, and hell: she's thirteen now.

He was eleven.

He squats down in front of her with his hands over his knees and his cigarette between his lips, and he tweaks her collar and smoothes back her hair and tells her "Get your money first, kiddo," and now behind him is the quiet susurration of tires on pavement, and gotta' bounce, kid.

His first client's here.

* * *

Kier Jaysen is a real impatient motherfucker: they fuck in the back of his black-beetle car with its windows tinted to gray fog and a backseat scented amber-musk and this one's not quite so hard: least the kid's only a few years older than him, even if he ain't into anything not attached to pussy. Got normal breath too, and not that old-mildew shit the geezers are always hacking up in his face while they're trying to tongue him.

"Stop," Kier Jaysen whispers with one hand down the front of his pants, and a fractional tip of Reno's head puts them nose to nose: little light brush to the top lip, bottom lip, nudge it open, oh yeeaahh, right there, guy's putty in his hands-

"Oh, _fuck_- ok, ok-"

Kissing's an art form he perfected long before he hit the streets for a little wet dick and some cash: trail fire down the neck and along the collarbone, take it all the way up the throat to the underside of the chin-

"Put it in," Jaysen gasps, gives his dick a hard jerk- too goddamned hard; does the moron really handle his own cock like that for Gaia's fuckin' sake?- and spits a teeth-thinned hiss into the folds of Reno's neck, all pinched up around the nose he has buried there. "_Please_."

Always harder- pardon the pun- when it's a taker and not a giver: with them flipped around and his eyes closed, it's easy enough to picture the puckered rose he aims his dick for on some pretty young thing with her pert little ass up in the air, backing herself onto his cock with a throaty little moan, but Jaysen's a motherfuckin' _talker_, and his first surge yanks an expletive from the guy's mouth that's all basso rumble and not falsetto plea and he's losin' wood here, asshole, wanna' shut it?

He squeezes shut his eyes until it's all black universe chasing white pinwheels behind his lids and he hammers hammers hammers- and _unnnh _there we go, starting to forget this isn't that client he had last week with the legs up to here and the tits packed to there; now _that _was a fuckin' woman-

He finishes after all, picturing those legs up to here wrapped around his waist.

Jaysen dumps him back on the corner like he is week-old garbage, and as he steps down onto the curb he notices Jessy is the first to be snatched from this sad straggling line of children showing a flash of thigh here, a white-moon curve of pre-pubescent breast there, and a knife takes him through the heart and pins it wriggling to his spine after all.

He taps out another cigarette from his pack and begins the long walk back to his apartment.

Way it goes, down here in the slums. Bend over and take it, toots, or die facedown in a gutter.

Gotta' make a choice, after all: your soul or your life?

* * *

Some days he wonders what happened to his soul.

He tilts back his head under shower-stream that scalds piebald patches of burn-mark across his arms, and he spends a long long time underneath it, cleaning everything.

Sold it for a loaf of bread is what happened, and maybe kid Reno with the gap-toothed grin and the peppermint-candy breath wouldn't understand, but he'd like to think his mother would.

He spends a long time wondering, though, with his head under that shower-stream and the drain between his toes going soot-black.

It's like all the fetid under layers of him have peeled themselves free and are one at a time flushing themselves down, coiling in ribbons over the knobs of his ankles and the skeletal tree-limb bones in his feet.

No going back now, ma, ya' know?

He tried once: straight as an arrow, that was little slum rat Reno for you, for as long as it took him to remember sharp knives of hunger pangs cutting up his stomach and burning in his throat, and by then it was too late, he'd take whatever he could get: an old man and a three-gil note in an alleyway behind an out-of-business sandwich shop, as it turned out.

He tried, though, ma.

He shuts off the shower and flicks water from his hair and snakes one piebald-patched arm into the wet jungle heat of his steamed-up bathroom, and now his fingers snag his one good towel- his only towel- and three minutes later he is dried and dressed and strolling back up the street with his hands in his pockets, heading back to that sordid little street corner.

* * *

The girl shows up three days in a row.

He sees only a glimpse of her the first day- swinging ass-length black hair and a quarter-moon profile of white skin and red-gleaming lips- in between changing cars: she is nothing more than a brief fleeting thought, peripheral, and then she is gone.

The second day, he is leaning against soot-smudged brick with a cig in his mouth and one thumb hooked through his pants when she shows up.

She's got a bag and a smile and around her cluster empty dolls of children with their dead glass eyes that become alive once more, for just a moment, and something prickles in his heart and closes over his throat, and his cigarette drops from dead-wood lips to hiss protests beneath his feet.

A shuffle and a half-lift of his hip off the wall inches his foot close enough to smudge it into stripes of cherry that make stars in the mud, and when he looks up from stomping it out and wiping it off his shoe, she is gone.

The next day he stops Jessy, blue-liquid Jessy with shadows for eyes and hollow caverns for cheeks- them's the breaks, sweet cheeks, but he's sorry, if you can believe that, he really is- and asks her who the girl is and what time she shows up, and what's in that bag she's had tangled in her hand both days.

Beats her: had a fuck and a suck and she missed all of the action both days.

He slips her most of the gil in his wallet; she's not making much or she's handing it all over to her mother and her brothers and her sisters, and he hates to remember her all tousle-haired and laughing and towing behind her a one-eyed doll with its ragged stuffing-leaking arm, this shadow-eyed girl with the cheeks all whittled down to rope sinew and imprints of teeth showing through too-thin skin.

Maybe the streets haven't completely hammered flat inside of him kid Reno with the gap-toothed grin and the peppermint-candy breath.

He'd like to think so.

He crouches in the shadows of the alley where no one will spot him from the street- closed for today boys, yo, sorry about that- and bounces on his heels with his cigarette unlit in his mouth, waiting for her to show up.

It's the smile he notices first- wreathes her face like the sun he hasn't seen in so long he can barely remember what it looks like, and beneath the sleek little fringe of her bangs her eyes come alive like the slum kids crowding her and that mysterious little bag, all crumpled up in her fist.

Got a set on her like she fuckin' paid for 'em- can't be more than his age, though, maybe even a couple of years younger. Funniest thing though is she radiates innocence like Mako reactors boil off smoke, and you better fuckin' believe he knows it when he sees it, 'cuz that ain't somethin' he's seen for years, and isn't _that _a perky little ass on her to go along with the rack-

Innocence and a pair like those don't go together, down here. If she's gonna' hang around here like this for long, with that smile and those tits, she'll get chewed up and spit out and wrung dry and hung up wet in no time, and he'll hate to see the roses fade outta' those cheeks and the tits begin to sag from a couple a' illegitimate brats and that smile wither into ash like the childhood the rest of them have long since watched burn down into cinders, but that's how it goes, on this street corner.

He palms his lighter from his pocket and stands up to light his cig.

He's got a smile on his face and a little strut in his walk as he approaches her, and now she turns the smile on him and holds out the bag as sunny little faces tilt up toward her like flowers groping for the sun, and he feels that prickling in his heart again, poking and prodding and peeling apart.

"You here to do business, toots?"

"No," she stammers, turning pink. "No, I just- they looked hungry, so I brought them these." She tips the bag down far enough to show him mounded tops of pastry studded blue-black. Fresh-baked, from the smell of it. "They're blueberry muffins. Do you want one? I have plenty."

He sweeps an appreciative assessment from head to toe, and she hugs the bag to her chest and drops her head far enough to spill her hair down over the tops of her tits, goddamn her.

A step and a lean and he is close enough to press his chest just subtly into her own, under the guise of getting a better look into that (shirt) bag. "Give you a good deal," he whispers into her ear, and another flush brightens her cheeks and creeps up toward her temples, and a half-breath pushes her tits up his chest in a slow little crawl that stands his dick up against the inside of her thigh, and now suddenly there is three feet of space between them, so fast he's not even sure he saw her move.

"Let me know," he says, and another wink and a smile and he walks away.

* * *

He counts the cracks in his mirror and the dings in his soul, and he wants to know what it is like to be Tits smiling through slum smoke with no sun in the sky or fresh air in her nose, Tits with the naiveté in her eyes and no ulterior motives behind her honey-silk words (all he's got is his glib tongue and his smooth young ass and what's it even _like_, being something more than a hole and a roll, here's forty-five and a pat, crawl back to your cesspit, whore), Tits handing out hope from a bag-

Maybe he oughta' get a name or somethin'.

On his smoke-smeared windowsill is summer-baked batter scabbed gray- everything's gray down here- and every glimpse of it brings a smile to his lips and wags a shake from his head, and if she thinks a little FD&C Blue No. 2 is gonna' save him, he's gotta' bridge over in Nibelheim to sell her at a sweet little discount, just for her, babe, just cuz he feels like it.

He almost stumbled over it, wrapped carefully in a scrap of that brown-paper bag and set down off to one side in the alleyway he cuts through every night on his way home.

He never does eat it and he doesn't throw it away, and the fuck's he supposed to do with it anyway, this shriveled little coal-lump of a pastry studded blue-black like the crescents beneath his eyes and the track-marks along his arms.

But it's the only decoration in this sunless shithole shack, and a shrug and a head cock and it stays where it is, and it's kinda' something to look forward to, on nights when the rust-chewed blinds awkwardly angled across his window glow faint rose-dawn by the time he gets home.

Faint rose-dawn glow is the most you're ever gonna' see, down here.

He heard once though that above the plate is a sun and a smoke-free sky and a moon poking out from behind clouds like a smile, and something about a man in that moon, and wouldn't _that _be something to see- real fuckin' colors, imagine that, indigos and heliotropes and emeralds and falcate pearls in the sky, every night-

He tosses coal-lump pastry from hand to hand like a ball, juggles it with a wink and a nod and a flourish of a bow, but it's all for an audience of one- some kid in a mirror, and y'know, sometimes he can't tell if the flaws are in the glass or the face.

Reno the Whore is the mask, after all: it is the kid in the mirror who is good ol' Reno what's-his-face, fugghedabout it anyway, cuz he sure as fuck has, and maybe it's the kid who is one jigsaw miscellany of spider web imperfections, because the mask is all smoothly perfected insouciance, utterly faultless- a tisket a tasket, suck your dick for a brisket, mister, ain't that how it goes?

He goes to sleep with fleas in his crack and street-quality Materia in his veins and her smile in his heart, and blue drug-fuzz swaddles him like baby Reno in his dear sweet momma's arms, and for a little while he remembers that somewhere out there are children who can still be children, and if you want to know a secret he thinks it's kinda' nice.

* * *

Jessy wants to know about the sun and how to get the taste of day-old spooge outta' your mouth.

Lemon-yellow and so hot it'll burn your eyes right outta' your face, look at it too long and course he ain't shittin' her- if he says so he says so and when's the last time he's been wrong- and nothin' much, you wanna' know the truth: gotta' just wear off when you don't have toothpaste or toothbrush or any of those Mako-green wash thingies he sees in commercials on little mini wall screens embedded in the gray-suede seats of more affluent clients.

He wants to know about the girl and the children who can still be children, and how come he can't remember what it's like to be one.

Reno the Whore slowly eats away and away and away at good ol' Reno what's-his-face, and each layer that is peeled aside and lies exposed and shivering and raw-meat red forms a thick slab of callus hard as a scar, and after a while he can't even feel those layers anymore: he is all whore and no kid.

It's an evolution- revolution, baby, gotta' take shit by force, down here, gotta' hold it down and choke it shut and hammer into submission everything you don't need in the slums (that'd be your conscience, capisce?) -and he's molded this new species of in-between something that is not quite man and not quite child (but ain't it all the same, with a dick up your ass?) for a long time now.

So stop cryin', kid. Get your own keloid armor around your heart and your soul and that sense of shame that's eatin' you up inside one day, but until then come on over here and sit with ol' Reno for a while- tell you a story, kiddo. Forget about the taste in your mouth and the ash in your heart and all those salivating old freaks lining the streets for a suck and a pump and another little chip off your innocence-

He wipes the tears from her eyes and hiccups die down into sniffles and when next he looks she is a fetal little coil against his chest with the black lace drawn down over blue-liquid, and there is something in his throat that works its way up from his heart, sticky wet heat like sick-day phlegm, and he blinks, once, twice, again: just the smoke in his eyes and left-over Materia high in his chest, and he stares down at puncture marks of contusion and gravestone humps of broken knuckles, and he wants to know what the fuck he is _doing _here, didn't _have _to leave, did you ma, it's not fuckin' _fair _you know, it's _not fair_-

He sets his chin down on her head and slides shut his eyes, and into one pocket slips those gravestone humps of broken knuckles.

He leans his head back against the wall behind him and lets them both be kids basking like coiled-up cats in hot lazy noon-glow, for just a moment.

* * *

Q: How many people has he fucked anyway?

A: What's seven times fifteen?

Multiply that by four years.

* * *

This is how he rolls, after hours: hands in his pockets, cherry in his mouth, and how's about a little wiggle, girls; this cat's trollin' the other side of the streets now.

Why'n the fuck would he be up (buh-dum-chh!) for a squeeze and a squirt and the obligatory yeah babe you were real good dincha' hear me screaming out your name like that- Candy, Heather, Ginger, Stephanie? His mind is a little rolodex of names he has to flip frantically fumbling through, and maybe he doesn't always stumble to a stop on the right one, but when your wet hole for the night is three booze-soaked brain cells shy of the short bus, it's not much of a stumble at all.

But back to the million dollar question, kids:

Sex all day and evidently that's not enough, because nights are one long Day-Glo smear through which scroll black stares of store fronts with signs flipped to 'closed' and women stained permanent-ink around the eyes, and three gil and a wink says he can get one of these chicks to go home with him for free- he is _that _Reno, after all- and _why_?

Because humanity is a couple of damp holes and some cash for his stash and he long ago stopped giving a shit about anything not served from back-pocket billfolds or sweaty ham-hocks of fists squeezing into thin ink-running cigars next month's rent.

And riddle him this: if seven times fifteen times four years equals one surprisingly intact dick- go on an' look for a bump or a sore or a rash, cuz ya' ain't gonna' find it- is this the resilience of youth, or the hardiness of manhood?

He is never sure to which category he belongs. Balanced between young boy and old man- the mirror says boy, his next client says who gives a fuck: it's a smooth tight hole so turn your head and cough son here comes daddy- he toes the line somewhere in amongst the two, and forgive a poor lil' ol' uneducated street ho for all this confusion: absent father figure blah blah yadda etc., and he's still slotting himself into his niche (a snicker a smirk, wham bam, slam it like it's hot drummer, he's here 'till Thursday) without any guidance at all.

Call it finding himself, if you like. What he is really doing is burying himself (parts of himself, unless they want to do the burying for him) and maybe that's why his throat tastes like open grave on mornings he shakes himself from drug/alcohol/sex-induced slumber to roll his bony/boned-raw ass through awkward faltering lurches that sew themselves into a stride long enough to reach the bathroom and the cool benediction of the porcelain god he will spend the next twenty minutes servicing on his knees, but that's the breaks, sweet cakes, and his knees are used to it anyway.

* * *

What's above the plate?

Sunlight and squares of blue gauze stitched into white-cotton and whiskey on the rocks that never stops flowing and poontang that never smells or goes to rot, or so he likes to think anyway.

He rolls Wednesday night/early Thursday morning onto her back- Tiffany/Michelle/Eden/Mary keep scrollin', Reno, or put your dick in her mouth before she can voice that indignant knife-squealing protest: "Did you just call me _Megan_, you asshole?" -and through moist-velvet folds slides his dick and a huff and a puff and he's seated to the sack, and in the ripple-cut glass above her bed he sees splinters of Reno fracture apart and piece themselves back together-

He is only one wide black well-gape of a mouth and blazing torch-flame hair in this mirror, and beyond him yawns the window and the soft velour flag-flutter of her curtains being pulled into smoke-scented air-

The sky down here in the slums is a smokestack lean of buildings too tired/ill-maintained/poorly-constructed to hold themselves upright anymore, and he doesn't see why this dumb bitch dropped an extra thou on this penthouse shithole anyway.

The view's nothing to cream your panties over, even if the bathroom is clean and the walls are unstained, and a blurry booze-fogged trip through the kitchen does not snag his toe even once.

But above the plate…man, wouldn't _that _be a sight? Rain drops and snow flakes and heat-shimmering folds of grass-scent coming down over his head like waves -September flame in the trees and December rime on the ground, cream-meringue crust that chews into his shoes little gray wear-streaks of erosion-

He wonders if the girl lives up there among all that September flame and December rime.

* * *

He does not see the girl again, which is just as well because the slums have yet to steal the polish from her eyes and the bounce from her step, but he _thinks _about her, _really _thinks, if you can believe that, and what he remembers are those magnificent tits most of all- and won't _those _be a sight when everything has caught up and rounded out and carved itself into perfectly-patterned hip to waist ratio- but almost as prevalent in his memories are snapshot pauses in the stop-motion cinema of his few fleeting glimpses of this fairytale creature, and those pauses are the tilt of a lip corner and artificial-cherry bouquet in reactor downwind and part of him wants to know if that lip balm tastes the way it smells, but more than that, he wants to know what brings a girl like that to a place like this.

And it's not a segue question, a natural silk-slide into his next query: let's get you outta' this place and somewhere you deserve, and while you're at it, how about slipping into something more comfortable, eh, babe?

He misses eyes with something behind them and lips that have something to say that's not "How much for a blow" or "What'll ten get me" and he notices he goes through a solid pack a day now, trying to forget about her smiling at whores with no money in her hands or lies between her teeth.

* * *

Dead kid, three o' clock. Pants around his ankles, cross up his ass-

Someone's queer and angry about it.

This is all just another obstacle in his path, though, and he steps around it without jostling the cig in his mouth or his hands from his pockets, and red-blood oil slick beneath his feet peters out into plain black sludge and vomit stain vermillion, and tick tock goes his death stick; once upon a time this dead whore in this teeming street woulda' bothered him-

Q: When did bare violated children's ass sticking up like the moon in the sky he never sees become just another trash mound to skirt?

A: When that bare violated children's ass sticking up like the moon in the sky he never sees became his own, cheeks spread and gil between his teeth, because he learned the hard way some of the fuckers like to swap out the real stuff for counterfeit currency that won't pass muster in the lowest dive this side of the stacks.

Alternative Q: How do you make a kid cry twice?

A: Too soon?

* * *

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury- hello to you and you and _you_, ma'am- let me present for your inspection exhibit A:

Notice the knots of pectoral beginning to mound up through rawhide flesh more scar than skin; observe, if you will, three straggling strands of red-brick beard poking through reactor-blackened jaw line-

Fifteen flips over into sixteen and a pucker and a purse and out blow the candles on your cake- the cake's you, babe, btw- and two years off is apparently close enough for a celebratory drink in the first 'legit' place you have gained access to in years-

And funny thing is, you don't even drink it at all: you finger freckles of condensation and swirl the glass just to hear those rocks tink off the sides and settle into chips of diamond on the bottom, and you remember days before dropped balls and a whole new perspective on just how important is the phrase 'exit only' when you're hungry, and again you picture a girl and a smile and virtue that has been squeezed one drip drop at a time from each of your pores-

The bartender oozes oil from his hair and his smile, and no no, kid, keep your cash, and did he mention he's closing up early?

And sixteen becomes twenty-five plus tip, behind closed doors.

* * *

From client car to client car he hops, but he never forgets to keep checking the air for artificial-cherry bouquet in reactor downwind, and at night he bounces speeches he will never get to use off boy Reno in the mirror, and he thinks about the squares of blue gauze stitched into white-cotton and how you turn a boy into a man anyway. (A slippery screw in the dark, where tears can only be tasted and not witnessed?)

The hollows in Jessy's cheeks fill out, but the ones in her eyes do not.

And the girl does not come back.

* * *

He obsesses because every day is one long slideshow of bad breath/yellow teeth/ocher sickle stains of sweat mark beneath shirt sleeves, and she is a new image added to the shuffle.

The boy in the mirror begs to differ, yo- she is what he used to be, and besides, there are those tits.

He spends too much time on his back on his bed, puffing long knots of gray from lungs that congeal to paste: two packs a day, and counting.

Jessy stops looking up with a worn-thin smile when he reaches the street corner now, and her mother turns away her face each time he passes her in the street, and what he doesn't get is how come it hurts, when nothing much does anymore.

Don't gotta' go blamin' a guy for the way things are, down here. Not like he didn't try to get her to go home, that first day, y'know?

Fuck it anyway. He's not your goddamned babysitter. You stick _your _cooze in some gropy old geezer's face and put food on the table yourself, why don'tcha', flabby old bitch?

* * *

Spiraling becomes a cant and a lean and gritty smoke-streaks of brick going on and on beneath his fingertips-

Few steps farther, almost there, you shit, you _fuck_- keep going because beyond are traffic-clogged streets and clients who might help, if for no other reason than keeping your heart pumping in your chest is another money shot in the ass and a blow job for a gil-

It hurts, though, it _hurts_-

Whore's eyes in the dark: opals, moonstones, marbles that hold imprisoned like tiny flickers of flame Mako-glow and reactor haze and why are they all just _staring _at him; yo help a fellow hooker out, kids, he's fuckin' _dyin' _here-

Away turn little coin-sized glints of doll's glass in the dark, and his mouth is all cotton-puff desert and sweet-salt blood-

Brick under his cheek and pebbles of alleyway cobbles like stubble beneath his lips-

Spiral, float down, corkscrew away-

Old man musk in his mouth and vomit in his nose and are they really going to just let him _die _here in this street-

Brown aureole blots out little coin-sized glints of doll's glass in the dark, and her voice comes to him from underwater, or it is he who is underwater, because everything breaks apart and ripples away on tiny seeds of bubbles that take with them sight/light/sound-

* * *

He pulls himself up and shakes himself out, and from between his lips dribbles blood in little drip drip drops that streak cobble-stubble underneath him-

_Jessy_- hold on kid-

He is so fucking dizzy- the alley and the streets and coronas of garish fluorescent shop signs become chips of plastic kaleidoscope crystal, spinning spinning spinning-

He shakes blood from his knuckles and tongues it from his lips and hey _fucker_, why don'tcha pick on someone your own size-

Her first scream breaks like a wave coming to shore when they hold her down by the shoulders, and he shouldn'ta gotten involved- against his policy, y'know- but she's jut a _kid _and why don'tcha at least _pay _for it like everyone else, ya' cheap limp dicks-

Moonlight in his belly- feels like a little hard-steel sliver of winter, scraping all the way through to his spine, and he swings blindly out with his elbow and stomps down on a kneecap that shatters with a sharply satisfying matchstick crack beneath his foot, and sorry, kiddo, that's all he's got-

Those tiny seeds of bubbles are coming to carry him away again.

* * *

He dreams of the sky.

Patches of blue through white-fleece banks, and underneath his feet splash fresh puddles that are not blood or piss or day-old vomit but _water_-

The sun in the water shivers apart into lemon-glass slivers.

He has never splashed in a puddle like this before, and lemon-glass slivers fill his mouth like laughter on his tongue and flicker in his eyes and suddenly he is ten-year-old peppermint-scented Reno with a mother and a cherry-

Somewhere beyond his dream he is aware of soft sobbing in the dark and the slow corpse-cold crawl of a hand shuddering its way up over his chest to the hummingbird pulse beneath his jaw line, but letta' guy sleep, why don'tcha, go the fuck _away_-

"Reno?"

His eyes shiver open into slits. "You ok, kid?" His lizard-scale lips peel apart into flakes around this question. If he doesn't shift he thinks the knife in his gut is ok -been through this before a time or two, after all, and far as he can tell, it didn't hit anything vital, but the blood on her hands and the purple dents around her eyes scrape him up onto an elbow anyway, and _look the fuck behind you _because now suddenly is this shapeless looming shadow from whose fist springs more slick-steel moonlight-

"Fuckin' whores," is the only answer to his question, and into his numb wood-block arms sags Jessy with a smile through her throat and no more tears in her eyes.

* * *

Fuckin' whores is right.

Couple a' Cures in him and that knife in his belly's no never fucking mind to him, and he follows them all the way to a corner street bar and from there to a sagging old apartment building that echoes back their drunken gibbering laughter, and the way they did her is too fast and not nearly painful enough, so he puts one's face through a lower story window and leaves it there- hold on a second, cuz he'll be back for you, better believe it- while the other swings a wildly inaccurate loop of a right cross toward his jaw, and what he discovers this night with smoke-clouds like storm fog over his head is how very, very inventive he can be, with the right motivation.

He's never been fond of the sight of blood, and a block down the road it bitches his pansy-ass and suddenly there he is on his knees puking and puking and puking- everything and the kitchen sink, that's what he thinks comes out of him this night with the smoke-clouds like storm fog over his head, and he wipes his mouth on his shirt and his red-painted hand on his pants, and he staggers back into the street and the first anesthetic half-mile of his long walk home.

He is still numb when he shuts the door behind him, and in the mirror over his bathroom sink is only Reno the kid now, splashed in blood and bruise and smudges of black like thumbprints beneath his eyes.

He has bartered and sold and given away every little piece of peppermint-candy Reno with the mother and the cherry, but he has never killed before, and hey, two-for-one ain't bad, for his first time.

The poetic irony's in the astonishment, Reno, baby- imagine, if you will, a suit (no tie) and a baton and free rein to wield with sociopathic glee authority you never thought you'd ever have, little no-surname whore like yourself, and stick 'em while they're hot cuz chances are you'll have to come back one day to finish the job, but it ain't personal, y'see?

That's the beauty of it.

Ol' what's-his-face in the mirror will never get it, but Reno the Whore with the carefully-crafted mask for cheeks and lips and flat killer's eyes will see one day, and there's a chopper- think of the clouds and the fresh blue air and the _sun_, kid- and a reputation and a family in it for ya', if you're interested.

Slap the soul down onto the butcher's block, carve a flank here, a sirloin there- what's it to ya' anyway, kid?

You momma's dead and your conscience is heading that way, and the kid in the mirror drew his last blood-bubbling breath when he cut the sack off that tool with the lousy right hook and made the other one watch.

Whorin's for the ones that can't make it as murderers, anyway.


	3. While the Lights Still Burn

**A/N: The next one-shot for this project is pretty close to completion, so I anticipate posting it soon; say within the next week or so. Also, the title of this is a slightly misquoted Thriving Ivory song, entitled 'While the Candle Still Burns'. And since I neglected to add a disclaimer in the first couple of chapters, let me just say now that I own nothing; characters, world, magic system, etc., they all belong to people much richer than I. I'm only a bored, lowly peon here to horribly fuck up the lives of those aforementioned characters. **

September **1994**: While the Lights Still Burn 

The city expands.

Neon lights crawl inch by inch by inch outward and upward and along perpetually night-shadowed teeth of shattered slum pavement, veiled in Mako fog.

Men painted mercury and midnight clank past milk cataracts of blind storefront windows shuttered in dust and cardboard detritus inked chicken scratch black: _Out of Business_. Along like a river are prodded the destitute, the desperate: the whores and the homeless and the junkies with punctures in their arms and webbed crystals for eyes.

Shin-Ra cares, you see, says the man in burgundy; father, creator, builder, savior: Shin-Ra brought hope to your children and light for their futures, so rest easy; here are liberators for your wretched, your discarded, these men in mercury and midnight who clank like steel spiders of machines that click click click along at their heels.

The destitute and desperate are only herded of course, on to other sectors that have yet to grow tired of them, on to different clients in different alleyways in different dead-ends where stop all semblance of this light and hope and caring: out of sight children still sell their souls and men still purchase them for less than a week's rent above the plate-

But the city is magnificent: an entire galaxy of stars among black eternity.

And above the plate, cinnamon fall stirs rust in the air and paints flame into the clouds, and below the plate there is none of this, only shadows that ooze gray death and pheromone wind, but the lights, y'see, are just so _pretty_.

And the city expands.


End file.
